CD Reviews

INDUSTRIAL BUT MELODIC !!!!

JUAN MARTIN GABASTOU | Weston Hills, FL United States | 04/14/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After the excellent but unsuccesful ?Machine And Soul ?,Numan went in a darker,industrial direction taking elements from current (for 94) music which he had inspired and influenced in the first place.This is a low-budget solo effort made entirely by himself in the studio with the only aid of guitarrist Kipper for the extra solos and TJ Davies for some backing vocals.The lyrics deal with agnosticism in a very angry way,a direction he would follow for the next two records with great success.The music has now a lot of keyboard bottom end,heavy guitar parts,the usual percussion programming and much less processed and natural vocals.Most of the album is of a dark,heavy upbeat nature with some excellent slow,opressive songs in a way only Numan can achieve but all of them have a nicely acomplished melodic line to them.The sound,on the other hand,is still not good but a vast improvement over the original release (I have Dawn too).The midrange has been cleaned and beefed up,so the vocals are no longer distorted and muddled up as before,and the upper end is a tad better as well,only it now exhibits a marked imbalance to the left ( revealed or introduced by remastering ? ) on many of the album tracks.The bonus tracks are comprised of singles,b-sides and demos,of lesser sound quality but high musical value.An EXCELLENT album and in my opinion a better treat than the 2 follow ups in terms of musicality rather than sheer sonic impact."

A strong precursor to his most recent work

Said Head | MN, USA | 02/05/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have to call this album a precursor as his latest albums really do not differ in style or lyrical content, but even so it's a robust beginning as strong as the rest of his industrial movement.

While the album does boast a slight musical immaturity in that the percussion for one is very similar throughout the entire album, which is a bit off putting, but overall the music ranks close to some of the strongest material he's done, especially in the likes of this being the introductory album to his new sound in that it's strong and refined, even though the preceding album, Machine + Soul, was very much beginning to lean towards this industrial feel, despite how hard most fans will deny the album's credibility.

Again with the percussion, most songs are pretty fimiliar in structure, with a low and often menacing tempo that allows the other instruments and production to creep in and deliver strong. 'A Question Of Faith' and 'Love And Napalm', however, continue the dancey techniques of his two earlier albums, while 'You Walk In My Soul' and 'Seed Of A Lie' are more typical dark Numan ballads.

One thing that stands out in this album are the vocals, very strong and focused. I remember reading somewhere that often Numan would write lyrical content after merely coming up with a song title, which of course is no bad strategy, but this time Numan seems to really want to convey something and the lyrics are not just there, but demand some attention.

One thing that bugs me with this release, however, is in additon to the somewhat short number of tracks in the original album only 4 bonus tracks are added, completely leaving out the 'Absolution' single which shortly came out after this release, it's b-side the newer version of 'Magic', or the b-side 'Whisper of Truth', all of which would've really helped bulk up the mix. There are also edit mixes of 'Question Of Faith' and 'Seed Of A Lie' that are absent, but not essential.

Still, this is a great album for older and modern Numan fans, and it's a complete shame that this album is in such small availability."